When sharing photos, computer users may upload their photos to a server and then send a uniform resource locator (URL) to friends they want to see the photos. Anyone who has received the URL can click on it or put it into the address field of a web browser to view the photos.
While this method allows people to share photos, it has several shortcomings. For example, this method may become unwieldy when a user tries to re-view different albums that have been shared as the user may need to search through various e-mails to obtain the URLs. Furthermore, people may forward the URL to others or may post the URL on a web site. This may allow more people to see the photos than the person originally sending the URL anticipated.